2007-06-20

I was figuring out what I would do with my basket of white currants from Nichols farm, and settled upon an Austrian dessert that first I found a picture of, but then struggled to find an appropriate recipe. I wanted to make sure to have an appropriately moist cake, a layer of berries (not baked so they burst), and meringue. A baked together meringue cake looks good for another time when I want to make pastry cream. Not related: I also ran across a turkish dish with eggplant that looks tasty.

2007-06-15

My flash isn’t digital-ttl capable, so I have to shoot all my flash shots manually (a useful exercise anyway, I suppose). Here by accident I had it on “high”, ISO 500, 1/125 f/5 (40mm). I especially like how the wood spatula handle floats against all the white.

Perhaps less interesting than the picture: this is two chinese preparations of choy. On the left, japanese bekana or tokyo choy is cooked with water chestnuts and cubed frozen (spongy) tofu, in oyster sauce (or, as Scott prefers, “brown” sauce) with scallion, ginger, and garlic. On the right is bok choy with carrots in a gingery miso sauce with honey. Both were delicious last night and for lunch today.

vitaminwater is the subject of the latest Slate “Ad Report Card” column. I have liked the stuff since I first saw it on 10/$10 sale. My favorite flavors are the red ones, the new XXX and Power-C. A friend alleges that all vitaminwater causes digestive … unpleasantness. Fortunately, I haven't had his problem. Also, the euro talk show ad is great – far better than any attempt I’ve seen for example on SNL since Sprockets.

2007-06-13

I have mentioned to people carrots of colors other than orange, and they tend to register complete astonishment. It turns out we can blame the Dutch in the 16th century for favoring patriotic Orange carrots.

Here are two, which I'd call red and purple. The red has just a thin layer of bright pigment (so you'd never want to peel these!) and the purple one goes about halfway into the root.